


All You Have Is Your Fire

by vanishedSchism



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Cassian-centric, Gen, K-2SO being a sassy asshole, Torture, also K2 and Cassian being bros, but it's pretty tame, everything falls apart without Bodhi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 06:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9222131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanishedSchism/pseuds/vanishedSchism
Summary: Tumblr prompt: Rogue One AU in which Bodhi doesn't 'recover' from the 'madness' he receives.





	

"Bor gullet can feel your thoughts. No lie is safe. Bor gullet will know the truth. The unfortunate side-effect is that one tends to lose one's mind."

Bodhi backed up as much as the chair he was chained to would allow. 

_But I'm telling the truth_ he wanted to scream. _I'm telling the truth, Galen sent me!_

"Galen sent me," he whimpered as the purple tentacles curl around his arms, moving closer and closer to his face. 

"Galen sent me," he said as the tentacles attached themselves to his temples and began to burrow their way into the skin. 

"Galen sent me!" he screamed as the floor dropped out from under him and he lost all sense of direction and there was nothing but him and his thoughts, except were they really his thoughts when he had no control over them? Were they really his thoughts when they came to mind unbidden, then _didn't go away_ even when more filled his mind, getting all tangled together with only a single thread to connect them: _I'm telling the truth, Galen sent me._

Galen smiled at him, even as this _thing_ sucked at his brain. 

"I'm proud of you Rook," he said, and those laughter lines were as clear as ever, even when his voice distorted and dragged. He couldn't understand the words anymore, but he knew what they were. _I have something I need to tell you. I need you to be brave for me._

And then the memory slurred and Galen's face became Saw's and there were tentacles on his temples and a deafening pain as he was ripped apart, shattered inside his own mind, so he didn't know what went where, just that Galen sent him to deliver a message.

\-------------

"That's the pilot!" Cassian said. It was impossible not to recognize him, his face was up all over Jedha. "Pilot! You're the imperial pilot?"

The man didn't acknowledge him, just stared straight forward, rocking back and forth. 

Fuck, he didn't have time for this. Jyn was down there with Saw Gerrera and he wasn't. He needed to get his objective and get out of here. 

"Pilot," he said again. This time he got a reaction. The pilot turned his head like a bird, though his eyes were still unfocused. 

"Pilot," he muttered. "I-Imperial pilot." 

Cassian tried waving his hand in the front of the man's face, hoping that might get him to focus. It did less than if he'd tried it with the blind fanatic behind him. 

"You're the imperial pilot?" he tried again. 

The man nodded vigorously. 

"Good good. Stay there." He grabbed the piece of metal he'd been twisting earlier and ran for the cell door. He usually would have tried to be more discreet, but at that moment the entire base shook, probably in an explosion, and Cassian figured the resulting distraction would be enough for him to break out relatively unhampered. 

He shoved his hand through the bars and slammed the piece of metal against the lock. It opened with a satisfying hiss. 

"Come on, we need to get that pilot!" Luckily, the Guardians he'd picked up were willing to help. The bigger one, Baze, blasted the lock on the pilot's cell. Cassian rushed in and grabbed Bodhi right as part of the ceiling collapsed where the blind guardian, Chirrut, had been standing a moment earlier.

"Get to the ship! We'll get Jyn in a moment!" 

By the time they were all loaded into the ship and flying as fast as they could out of there, they got a chance to look at what this weapon could really do. Jedha City was gone, a wave of earth and broken buildings rising in its place and hurtling toward their tiny ship. 

"We need to jump!" Cassian yelled, flicking a couple switches on the dashboard. 

"I haven't finished my calculations, we could-" 

"I'll finish them for you!"

They disappeared into hyperspace right before they would have slammed into the ruins of Jedha City.

"Everyone still alive?" Cassian yelled into the cabin. 

"I have definitely felt worse!" Chirrut said. Baze groaned and Jyn looked a little shellshocked. All reasonable reactions, Cassian thought. He turned around to see Bodhi, who was sitting behind K-2SO. He rocked back and forth, eyes focused firmly on the floor. 

"My dad is working for the resistance!" Jyn suddenly yelled, standin up and drawing all eyes to her. "I saw the message, it- it was a holo, he's built this weapon, but he can destroy it, he said he built a way to destroy it! There are plans. You'll see, he's rigged it so one solid shot to the reactors will make the entire thing blow up."

"Do you have the holo?"

Jyn shook her head. "No. No it was- I couldn't get it, everything happened so fast. But I'm telling the truth!"

"What were his exact words?"

"Blow the entire base. He _planned_ this! He's a good person. We just have to get him and he'll explain!"

Cassian looked around the rest of the cabin. He knew K-2SO didn't believe her, but K also knew what they were _really_ going to do on Eadu, so he wasn't much help. Chirrut looked like he believed her, though neither he nor Baze made any comments. 

Cassian looked at Bodhi. "I have the message," the pilot told the floor. "Galen sent me." 

Fuck. Cassian shot Jyn a _look_ , one that meant 'I don't trust you but we're still doing this' and then moved to kneel next to Bodhi. "Listen Pilot. _Bodhi_ ," he said. Bodhi's his eyes flicked up to Cassian's, wide and glassy, "you know about the weapon." A statement, he seemed to respond better to those. 

"W-weapon," Bodhi confirmed, his eyes roving over Cassian's face. "S-sir I can't k-know. I'm just a cargo pilot. A-a pilot. Imperial pilot."

Cassian sighed. His experience was in interrogating people who wouldn't talk, not people who clearly would. He could storm into that base and kill Saw Gerrara and all his cronies again just for the loss of such a valuable resource. He took a deep breath. He wouldn't do that, not only because they were all dead, but because apparently the girl in the front of his ship cared about Gerrera and he was going to need her to cooperate for this next phase of the mission. 

"Bodhi," he said again, making sure his voice was gentle. "What did you know about Erso? Galen Erso?"

Bodhi's attention once again focused on Cassian. "Galen sent me! Galen sent me, I'm telling the truth! PLEASE!" He lunged forward, grabbing Cassian's shoulders with more strength than Cassian thought he possessed. "I'M TELLING THE TRUTH! GALEN SENT ME. GALEN SENT ME, I'M THE MESSENGER! AUUUGGGHHHHHH!!" 

He suddenly clamped his hands around his ears and scrambled back against the side of the ship, screaming like he was being tortured. He curled into a ball and clawed at his temples until blood trickled down the side of his face, screaming the entire time. 

"Dammit, Bodhi. Bodhi!" Cassian tried to pull his hands away, but the man was deceptively strong. 

"I guess this really isn't the time to mention that we have arrived at Eadu," K2-SO said from the front. Cassian swore. 

"Find us cover! I need to deal with this!" he yelled, over the pilot's uninterrupted screaming. 

He took a deep breath. He would never be able to calm this man if he couldn't even calm himself down. He moved his hands to the pilot's shoulders. _Comforting_. He could do comforting. 

"Bodhi," he said again. "We got your message. We know about the Deathstar. You did it, Bodhi, you delivered your message." 

Well, he had stopped screaming, though he was still curled into a ball against the side of the ship. "I believe you," Cassian said, because maybe he'd hit on something helpful. "You've done a great service to us and the rebellion. You'll be a hero when he get back to the base. You did it. Galen would be proud."

"G-galen sent me," he said quietly. 

"Yeah," Cassian confirmed. "You delivered his message." 

The question was, could the message be trusted? He doubted Jyn was lying, he knew liars, he was a liar, and that girl telegraphed the truth in her every twitch. She cared about herself and her family and she'd trust her family, the imperial scientist Galen Erso, unless she had information that she shouldn't. She'd been in prison for at least two years, she couldn't have that much information. So the question was simple, could he trust that Galen Erso had had a change of heart? 

He looked at the pilot in front of him, who looked a little less tense, though still clearly lost and in pain. The pilot seemed to trust Erso, and he had risked a lot to deliver his message. More than he had been expecting, Cassian thought grimly. People like Jyn thought that the only thing they were risking with the rebellion was their lives. Cassian knew better. He also knew that he couldn't trust this broken man's judgement over the Alliance's. 

They probably weren't flying into a trap, if anything had been a trap it would have been what happened on Jedha but that didn't mean the information was true. It really didn't mean that he should allow Erso to live, continue creating machines of death and destruction. Technology that would orphan more children, destroy more families, enslave more planets. No, he couldn't allow that to happen, he had to kill Erso. 

First though, he had to get close enough. 

He realized he was still holding Bodhi's shoulders. He moved back, but he felt the need to say something as he moved away. "I'll be right back," he murmured, "but I need to make sure we don't die." 

"Go down," the pilot said, so quietly that Cassian wasn't sure he'd actually said anything. He shook his head and headed to the front of the plane. 

K-2SO was in the pilot's seat, going for a 'hide in the clouds' approach. The rest of the passengers were quiet, apparently not having a lot of experience in evasive flight maneuvers. That was fine with Cassian. K-2SO was a reliable pilot. He would, and did on almost every mission, trust him with his life. 

"What's it look like out there?" he asked, eyeing the deceptively tall stone spires jutting out of the fog. This really wasn't flying weather. 

"What do you think it looks like?" the droid answered. "I can hardly see anything and the tension in this shuttle is almost as thick as the fog outside! I haven't seen any Imperial patrols, but I think that's more likely because I haven't seen _anything_ at all!" 

At that moment, the entire ship shuddered, then began listing hard the right. 

"What just happened?" Cassian asked. 

K-2SO answered with a stream of swearing, but he managed to right the ship. 

"Like I said," he complained, "Can't see a fucking thing." 

"We can't stop now," Jyn piped up. Her knuckles were white on the seat, but she had an unfortunately determined expression on her face. 

"K, you have the coordinates, take us in." 

"Sure, make me do all the work. K, you have the coordinates, you're definitely the person who should be risking his life avoiding Empire ships and flying through this blasted fog. That certainly won't go wrong." 

"it won't."

It did. 

The Empire tends to notice when there's an unregistered ship on the planet housing their secret military research base and Cassian, as a rule, really preferred to stay _off_ the Empire's radar. Some things, however, were not to be. 

"K, take evasive maneuvers."

"Really? I thought I'd just fly in a perfectly straight line and wait for these Imperial ships to shoot me right out of the sky," K said as he dropped into a nosedive. 

He had to pull up quickly because he nearly slammed into a spire that was almost hidden by the fog but as soon as he rose above the treacherous terrain, they had Empire ships on them again, forcing K-2SO to dive again as the ship shuddered under the imperial guns.

There was a horrendous screech of metal as the ship slammed into one of the pillars, completely crushing the right wing. 

"Everyone hold onto something!" Cassian yelled. "We're coming in hot!" 

K-2SO let out a creative string of curses as he wrestled with the controls, trying to lose the other ships in the fog.

"They'll be on us as soon as we're down. Cover each other!" Cassian had time to yell right before the ship crashed. 

\----

Cassian groaned as he came to. HIs head pounded and he could feel blood trickling down his face. Well, if it was still wet, he couldn't have been out long. 

"Oh, you're awake," a voice said above him. Jyn. 

"You sound so happy about that," he said, opening his eyes. Cave. Serviceable hiding place. The first place Empire patrols would look, but it made it easy to avoid them once they came.

She crossed her arms. "Yeah well your droid is the only one who knows where the base is and he won't talk until you're up. I suggested reprogramming him, but I figured I'd wait till you were dead." 

Cassian sat up. No dizziness or nausea, which were both good signs. He'd hit his head but he was probably okay. 

"Stay away from K-2," he said, slowly standing up, "no one is doing any reprogramming." 

Jyn shrugged. 

Cassian sighed and followed her deeper into the cave. The rest of the group were sitting together on the floor. The Guardian's friend, Baze, had a bloody cloth wrapped around his arm and they all had a few new cuts and scrapes, but it looked like no one was seriously injured. K-2SO was sitting next to Bodhi who had put his goggles over his eyes and was rocking back and forth and muttering just like he had been in Saw Gerrera's cell. 

"K, how far away are we from the base?"

"About a kilometer. Not an easy one, of course, given there are Empire patrols and guns and that blasted fog." 

For all his complaining, K did have a point. They had to be careful from this point on. Without a working ship, they would have to work together, even more than Cassian had initially anticipated, to complete their objective (his objective) and get out of here alive. 

Cassian turned to what he was grudgingly beginning to accept as his crew. "They already know we're here, so we have to move quickly. Luckily, they don't know _why_ we're here. Galen should still be on the base, though they will have increased security. Most importantly, we need to get another ship. K, I need you to go with our friends here and commandeer a ship. Jyn, you're coming with me. We're going to scout for your father. I don't have any flares, so K-2SO, move fast." He met K-2SO's eyes and prayed that his friend understood his message. "You'll have to get off that landing pad as soon as you can." _Otherwise the Alliance will bomb you to bits_ went unsaid. 

K2 nodded. "Come on humans," he said, standing and pulling Bodhi up with him, "you heard our illustrious leader, it's time to die for our ideals." 

Baze laughed. "You mean like every other day of my life? Sounds fun." 

Chirrut lightly smacked him on the uninjured arm, but his attention was entirely focused on Cassian. "The Force flows strangely through you," he said. He probably would have said something more biting something along the lines of 'the Force knows you're a murderer' but he must have thought he needed Cassian to get off this planet, because he didn't, just turned toward K-2SO and motioned for him to move forward with a smile. 

Cassian looked at Jyn. She ran her fingers over her blaster with a determined look on her face. If there was one thing he could trust about her, it was that she could handle herself against the Empire. He had no doubt they would _find_ Galen, the question was, what then? Killing her father without Jyn killing _him_ would take a miracle, one that he wasn't quite sure how to engineer. 

Especially with the Alliance ships coming. 

He could contact _them_ if he could get a moment alone, but he had to keep track of Jyn, he wasn't sure he'd get that moment. 

These and similar thoughts churned in his head as he led Jyn through the fog. He didn't have much more idea than her about where he was going, but he _did_ know how to avoid Empire patrols (a skill he demonstrated a couple times in their trek) and he knew how to quickly gather intelligence, even when he had none to begin with. 

He was so good that by the time they were both standing on a craggy cliff, trying to make out the Imperial base through the heavy rain, they not only hadn't been spotted, he also hadn't had any chance to think about what he was about to do. 

Kill the Empire's head engineer before he could develop any _worse_ weapons. 

Murder a girl's father in front of her. 

He pulled the sniper rifle off his back and ignored Jyn's hostile "what are you doing?" as he tried to locate Erso. There was a line of bodies in the middle of the floor but he didn't know if any of them were Galen. 

"Are any of those him?" he asked, pointing to the corpses, just dark smudges without the scope. 

"Why are there so many?" Jyn asked in a small voice. It didn't sound anything like her and even though this was what Cassian was here for, it still made his chest ache a bit. 

He handed her the rifle. 

It took her almost no time to look down the scope and then shake her head. "He's not there. I don't know any of those people but my dad... He's not there. I don't see him." She scanned the base, using the scope to see better through the rain. "Wait, there in the corner. Next to- to the man-"

Cassian cupped his hands in front of his eyes, trying to keep out the worst of the rain. "The man in the white cape?" He didn't need Jyn to identify _him_. 

"Krennic," they said at the same time. 

It was hard to make out, but he could also just see the figure in the black cloak next to Krennic. His head was down and every blaster in the room seemed to be pointed at him. 

"He wasn't lying," Cassian murmured. Not if that's how the Empire was reacting to him. Like he was untrustworthy, like he was a traitor. 

Before he could _do_ anything about this new information (Bodhi was right, Galen really was trying to help them) he heard ships on the horizon. 

"Jyn! We have to go! We need to get to the hangar and leave. Now!" 

Jyn looked up, confusion written plain across her face. And then she looked at the horizon and it very quickly shifted to suspicion, then anger.

"Are those _rebel_ ships?"

"Yes and they're about to bomb that platform! You can kill me later, we need to get back to K2!" Cassian yelled, grabbing her arm and pulling her toward the cliff. He had to let go to actually go down, but she seemed to have gotten the message and was now moving. Cassian put his concentration on scaling this cliff without falling. 

With the wind and the explosions and the rain it was hard going, and Jyn and Cassian were only about two thirds of the way down the cliff by the time an Imperial cargo ship hovered below them with its back hanging open. 

"Get in!" Baze yelled. 

Jyn jumped first, the sniper rifle still slung across her back, and landed with hardly a stumble inside the ship. The ground shook as something on the base exploded, and Cassian almost lost his grip on the wet ledge. He held on, but he knew K2 couldn't keep the ship in position for long. One of their own fighters might try to shoot it out of the sky. 

He took a deep breath and jumped.

And missed. 

His fingers scrabbled to grab hold of the streaming wet metal but there wasn't anything to really grab onto. His fingers slipped as he fell and he just had enough time to wonder if he'd die when he hit the ground or if he'd have to find shelter before a patrol could find him when a strong hand grabbed his arm. 

Jyn's had almost popped out his shoulder, but she was also lying on her belly and _grabbing_ him. Before he could ask _why_ she was pulling him up, and he had the presence of mind to swing his body and throw a leg over the side of the ship. They pulled each other, panting, away from the edge, and as soon as they were both inside, K-2SO began to close the door. 

Cassian took a moment to catch his breath and appreciate the fact that he wasn't dead. 

Nex to him, Jyn stood up and angrily wiped the water off her clothes. "You lied to me," she hissed before stomping away.

Cassian sighed and pulled himself off the floor. He wiped water out of his eyes and headed for the cockpit. 

"K, I'm in. Let's get off this Force-forsaken planet." 

"Finally, something we can agree on. I told you to be careful Cassian. Why do you never listen to me?"

"I'm alive and the target is dead, that's what matters K."

"Oh the target. That girl is more trouble than she's- FUCK." He swerved the ship, which was much larger than the fighter they'd come in on, right as an Imperial fighter appeared out of the fog. 

The entire ship screamed as K-2SO rammed straight into it. 

After obliterating the smaller ship, the rest of the escape from Eadu was harrowing enough that no one had a chance to talk about what happened at the base, which Cassian was grateful for. It didn't sit well with him that he wouldn't have killed Erso if he had a choice. He really didn't have enough information to make that sort of decision, not based on a delusional kid, a crazy pilot and two seconds of observation. He shouldn't be upset that a threat like Galen was dead but... he wasn't happy about it. 

And the tense peace could only last so long before someone said something. 

\----

The argument was just as brutal and unhelpful as Cassian had been expecting. Jyn was hurt and angry and he'd tried to defend himself like she _didn't_ have a personal stake in the matter, and Chirrut just fixed him with this _disappointed_ expression, and he would be happy to get away from this merry band and their never tested ideals. 

_He_ knew what sacrifice was. She didn't, she'd just... lost everything she had. 

Cassian sighed. He didn't really want to deal with K's commentary on the whole situation which meant that he found himself sitting next to Bodhi again. 

The pilot was trying to dry his goggles with his sopping wet shirt, an effort that just led to him spreading the droplets of water across the lenses. 

"Hey, Bodhi," Cassian said, sitting down next to him. Bodhi turned to look at him, or in his general direction at least. His hands kept scrubbing his goggles. "I'm sorry about all this. I know Galen meant a lot to you, and you've already given so much up." He sighed. "You deserve better than this. We all do, but the only way to get to better is to go through a lot of hell first." 

"I can do right for myself, I can make it right," he said, quickly looking back down at his goggles. "If I'm brave I can do right by myself. If I'm brave, I just need to be brave."

"You have been brave," Cassian said. "Unbelievably so. You delivered your message."

Bodhi didn't say anything and Cassian fell quiet. A couple minutes later though, he felt a hand squeeze his own. He stayed there until the rebel base came into sight. 

\---

"I'm setting you up in my room, okay?" Cassian told Bodhi as they walked across the landing pad, every pair of eyes in the base tracking their movements. As if there wasn't enough excitement behind Galen Erso's daughter, they also had an imperial defector _and_ an Empire vessel, more than enough to raise any eyebrow they came across. 

Cassian would be glad when they could get back to the bunks, out of the public eye. Privileges of being an officer of the Alliance meant he had his own room, which he figured would probably be best for the pilot. 

Being damaged meant that he'd get a little more understanding from the people here, but it didn't erase the fact that he had been part of the Empire. Cassian knew that the people he trusted would understand Bodhi's situation, understand that at the worst he'd been led astray by a man after his own interests, but there were few people here that Cassian trusted. Bodhi would be safest when accompanied by him or one of his friends. 

He looked around the base, hoping that one of his friends would be around. No such luck. There were a surprising few number of people on the landing pad, and although Cassian recognized most of them, he wasn't about to introduce them to the imperial defector. 

Baze and Chirrut were still behind him though. 

He turned around, causing both of them to immediately stop. "I need to debrief with the council. Can you watch the pilot?" 

Chirrut looked between them, right over the arm that Bodhi was still clinging too. "You are good men, though you both doubt yourselves."

"He means yes," Baze said. "We'll look after the kid." 

Chirrut smiled in that way of his, then walked forward and gently removed Bodhi from Cassian's arm. 

"Great, stay out of trouble, this shouldn't take too long." 

\----

They did not, it turned out, stay out of trouble. On reflection, Cassian wasn't sure why he would ever entrust that particular task to a Guardian of Whills. He must be tired. 

He knew something was wrong as soon as he stepped out of the war room. You could always tell when there was a fight in the Mess and today was no exception. 

He could hear the yelling even before he stepped into the room and saw a rough ring surrounding a table in the corner. Shoving through the crowd confirmed that yes, everyone was crowded around his crew and not only was Jyn fighting three men twice her size, Chirrut was smiling at a woman who was clutching her face and standing next to the man doing most of the yelling - yelling at Bodhi. 

One of the men screamed as Jyn slammed her elbow into his face, but Cassian's attention was on the pilot. 

Bodhi was _fighting_. It wasn't skilled, Cassian was sure he could take him out with two well aimed moves, but it was dirty, all elbows and and fingers aimed at the soft spots that brought aggressors down in one hit. The places where armor was weakest, Cassian realized with a start. 

He had a feeling that defecting wasn't the first time this man had defied the Empire. 

Still, he'd better get involved before anyone got seriously injured. He broke free of the crowd and ran into the conveniently empty space right next to the fight. 

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded of the rebel.

"He's an imperial spy!" the man Bodhi had just sucessfully brought to the floor hissed. 

Cassian looked down at him. "Do you have any evidence to back up that claim?"

"He flew here in an _imperial ship_ ," the man, who he reocgnized as the pilot Bolen, spat. 

Cassian still refused to stoop to his level. Physically at least. "Need I remind you," he said, loud enough that the entire Mess would be able to hear, "that _I_ was also on that ship?"

Bolen began to say something about how that didn't change his opinion at all but Cassian was no longer listening. "I, Captain Cassian Andor, vouch for this man right here. He defected from the Empire in order to deliver valuable intel. Anyone who has any problems with him can take it up with me. You know where to find me." 

Bolen scrambled to his feet under Cassian's glare and then quickly made for the bar. Cassian didn't bother to watch him go. Instead he moved closer to Bodhi and, as predicted, easily caught the punch that came right for his thigh. 

"I-I'm sorry Sir," Bodhi immediately stammered, snapping to attention and actually trying to _salute_ although he couldn't because Cassian was still holding his wrist, "I-I- Orders! I have orders I'm supposed to be..." he trailed off and his body didn't relax so much as _droop_ and _that_ funnily enough was what made Cassian almost lose his grip on Bodhi's wrist. He didn't say anything after that though, just stood there, half collapsed against Cassian. He was shivering again. 

Cassian stepped forward, propping Bodhi up with his own body, which was awkwardly similar to an embrace. 

"I-I _gave_ them- G-galen sent- the message- I-I found- no I'm- it's the truth it's the truth the truththetruth..." he muttered, his eyes tightly closed and his forehead resting on Cassian's shoulder, so close that Cassian could feel every shiver, every twitch, the way his throat trembled with a held back sob.

He sighed and pulled the pilot closer, a hand on his back in what was... a hug. Cassian had _hugged ___people before, of course he had, but it had always been a quick embrace, a pat on the back for a job well done, not whatever this was. Not an embrace meant to cause comfort, especially when there was no comfort to be had.

Cassian exhaled a sharp breath as he realized that the last time he had _hugged_ someone like this it had been his brother, the last time he had seen him. That was at least ten years ago.

Jyn extracted herself from her own fight while he did. She shoved a ration bar in her mouth and glared at him. 

Well, at least with her around he didn't have time to feel sorry for himself. 

"They want to see you to judge your words for themselves. They won't listen, but you should tell them what happened anyway."

"Why do you care?" Jyn growled, though the hostility was somewhat lost along with the crumbs that sprayed out of her mouth. 

"Because I believe you, as hard as that is for you to understand. I think that, whatever his reasons were, your father was telling the truth, and that the only way to destroy this weapon is to get those plans."

Jyn narrowed her eyes but she didn't insult him, which Cassian thought counted as a step forward. 

"I have business to take care of. I know you don't think I mean it, but good luck."

After that, there was nothing left to be said. Cassian nodded to Chirrut and Baze, he'd fill them in on the details of his plan later, and led Bodhi out of the mess. He had a friend he needed to talk to. 

\-----

Jex Reida had her own office, which is how you knew she was important. She was the Alliance's foremost expert on torture, more knowledgeable even than the couple of Jedi that the Alliance had contact with, though her knowledge was hard earned. 

She'd trained Cassian in most of his interrogation techniques. 

She looked up when he walked in. 

"Jex!"

"Hello Cassian. And friend. Who is that with you?"

"This is Bodhi Rook, the pilot that defected from the Empire."

She moved closer, examining them both with eyes that felt like they could pierce right through you and see the soul underneath. This woman probably wouldn't have hesitated to pull the trigger on Galen Erso. Or maybe she would have known not too. He frowned, which she immediately noticed. 

"You said he defected. Did the Empire do this?" she asked, turning her attention from Bodhi back to Cassian. 

"No, no," Cassian said, "it wasn't the Empire. I found him on Jedha, with Saw Gerrera."

Jex grimaced. "The extremists? Not the worst thing that could have happened but..." she trailed off as she crouched down and began rifling through a couple of beaten up boxes. Cassian wondered how she found _anything_ in a room as disorganized as this and her string of quiet cursing wasn't making him confident that she actually could. 

It took a couple minutes, but finally Jex found the holotape she was looking for. She pulled it out and placed it one the table. Apparently just finding it reminded her of its contents, because she didn't play it, just played with it, turning it over and over in her hands, as she addressed Cassian. 

"He kills our soldiers," she said, "has never kept one long enough for us to begin to attempt to recover them. And you Cassian, I'm sure know that the Alliance has never felt it worth the risk of sending in double agents." 

"I am aware of the Alliance's reasoning," Cassian said. 

"Mmm. Luckily for you I have eyes everywhere." 

"You know Jedha City is gone?"

Jex, who had been in constant motion since Cassian had entered the room, went completely still. Her hands closed into fists on the table. "There were good people down there. It was the weapon everyone's been whispering about, wasn't it?" She took a couple of deep breaths then looked straight at Bodhi, who shifted nervously under her gaze. "The weapon he worked so hard to tell us about." She frowned. "Or Saw, I suppose." 

"Galen sent me," Bodhi told her, "Galen sent me to tell you about the weapon. I have a message in my boot!" He crouched down to retrieve the supposed message, yanked his boot off and then frowned, then began to hyperventilate as he shook the boot trying to find the message. 

"Bodhi," Cassian said, putting his hands on Bodhi's arms. "You gave us the message."

"I-I-I gave it t-to them!" he gasped. "I did I-I-I..."

"Shh," Cassian said, still lightly holding him as he waited for Bodhi to get a grip. Or at least start breathing again. "I know."

"Th-they didn't didn't they didn't take it! No I-I gave it, I did I did!" He fell to his knees and curled into as small of a ball as he could manage, even as he hyperventilated. 

Cassian had no idea what to do. 

Luckily, Jex did. She rushed over to Bodhi and immediately dropped to her knees, a gesture Cassian hesitantly copied. Then she put her hands on his shoulders. "Bodhi, hey Bodhi, it's okay, you're safe. Cassian got your message, right Cassian?"

"Yes, uh, yeah, it has been very helpful to the rebellion." 

"See Bodhi? Now I need you to do one more thing, breathe with me okay? One," she took a deep breath in, then let it out with a whoosh when she saw that Bohdhi wasn't copying. "That's okay, you're okay, just try to breathe." She kept murmuring instructions, counting and breathing and keeping her voice low. It took a while, but eventually Bodhi calmed down. 

Cassian took a deep breath of his own and made himself more comfortable on the floor. 

Jex tucked a loose curl behind her ear. "Saw Gerrera doesn't know any Force users, at least not well enough to use them for the sake of interrogation, not to mention that's a Sith skill anyway." She said, looking somewhere over Cassian's shoulder. "So luckily, that's probably not what happened."

"He was only there for a day, at the most," he agreed. 

She nodded and glanced at the table, where she'd left the holotape, but apparently decided she didn't need it and turned back to their conversation. "That time frame makes me skeptical that they used conventional torture techniques. It's far more likely that Gererra used some sort of creature that, in the process of obtaining its information, drives the victim insane. Given the climate of Jedha... Yes, I think it was a Bor Gullet."

Bodhi stiffened, "No no no! I'm telling the truth, I'm telling the truth, Galen sent me! Galen sent me, I'm telling the truth!" He continued to yell as Cassian tried to calm him down, putting an arm around his shoulder and holding him close as he murmured reassurances, that Bodhi wasn't in the extremist base anymore, that he was safe, that they believed him.

"As I thought," Jex said. "There is good news here. Bor- these creatures aren't naturally malicious, their main use in interrogation circles are to determine the truth. It's not as reliable as a Force user, which of course has its own problems, but it helps in... what I imagine is exactly this situation. Determining the truth of a single piece of information." 

Cassian realized that his hands had tightened and Bodhi was looking at him with a fearful expression. He consciously relaxed his fingers. "Sorry." He moved his thumb in circles over Bodhi's shoulder instead. Personal feelings aside, it was such a waste to completely destroy a potential source of information. He was convinced that Bodhi had information that would be useful to the rebellion, which would have been useful to Saw Guerrera too, if he could only _see_ that. And yes, maybe there were some personal feelings too, but Cassian Andor was a professional first and foremost, he was here for the sake of the Alliance.

Jex gave him a long look, like she knew exactly what he was thinking and thought it was utter bampa crap, but she didn't comment. "My point being that there wasn't any intention behind the destruction of his mind. Memories weren't removed or hidden they were just lost or obscured. This creature had a single goal, but rather than using the proper tools for the job, such as forceps, it used a lightsaber. If you can find someone willing to get into his head, they may be able to reorder it."

"Someone who can get into his mind. You mean a Jedi." 

Jex nodded. "Or other Force user, yes. One who's done this before, of course. Messing with memories is, _should_ be, a delicate operation. Don't trust that to someone who doesn't know what they're doing."

"Of course. Also, I hate to ask this but I have something I need to do, can you keep an eye on him? These rebels seem to think that anyone who has ever set foot on Empire soil is a traitor and spy." 

Jex drummed her fingers on the floor. "You want me to look after your friend, find a Jedi willing to talk to you and just sit by while you go do whatever heroic and utterly foolish thing it is you're planning, is that it?" 

"I seem to recall that you value your life."

"Unlike you, it seems." She sighed and stood up, returning to her desk and holotapes. "Good luck, Cassian. May the Force go with you."

"And you, Jex. I _will_ be back." He just had to round up all of the people on this base that truly did value the Rebellion over their lives, convince them to disobey what could very well be direct orders and go to a heavily fortified Empire planet with almost no backup. All with a girl that clearly had greater motivations than the Alliance and would probably sooner shove a knife in his ribs than actually listen to anything he had to say. But that was fine, he'd been in worse situations. 

He took a deep breath. He _would_ come back. Once that planet destroyer was out of the sky. He'd return to the Alliance and do what he's always done, spy and murder and lie for the sake of a better universe. He just had to break into an Imperial record vault first. 

No sweat.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow okay, so when I first started writing, I expected this to be about 1.5k words. Then I added background and an OC and possible _plot_ and it all went out the window. I've only seen the movie once, so I tried to skim over most of what straight up stuck to canon, so sorry about the weird little jumps. 
> 
> I'm really proud of what I ended up with though? 
> 
> Anyway, I'd love to hear your comments! I came out of Rogue One and was like "I have to write about this" so I hope I did it justice. Let me know!
> 
> You can also talk to me at my tumblr- vanishedschism.tumblr.com


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